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This invention relates to a medical diagnostic ultrasound system and method. Ultrasound systems generate a sequence of images representing a region of a body. Different processes and hardware are used to generate the images. Many of the processes and hardware components are divided into ultrasound subsystems. Each subsystem is typically implemented with an ASIC. The ASIC is designed to perform a particular process. The processes are determined in part as a function of the system architecture or ASIC based design.
The subsystems are connected to a back plane or common structure to form the ultrasound system. The ultrasound system typically is mounted on a large wheeled cart.
The present invention is defined by the following claims, and nothing in this section should be taken as a limitation on those claims.
By way of introduction, the preferred embodiments described below include a medical diagnostic ultrasound imaging system and method in which a non-real-time operating system is used to transfer image data. In one preferred embodiment, a medical diagnostic ultrasound imaging system includes a central processing unit (xe2x80x9cCPUxe2x80x9d) located outside of the received signal path to transfer image data. The non-real-time operating system can be used, for example, to transfer image data from a hard disk to system memory for display, to transfer image data from system memory to the hard disk for storage, or to scroll image data to view a loop of image data.